Navan Install & Auth

Overview

Set up Navan SDK/CLI and configure authentication credentials.

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18+ or Python 3.10+
• Package manager (npm, pnpm, or pip)
• Navan account with API access
• API key from Navan dashboard

Instructions

Step 1: Install SDK

# Node.js
npm install @navan/sdk

# Python
pip install navan

Step 2: Configure Authentication

# Set environment variable
export NAVAN_API_KEY="your-api-key"

# Or create .env file
echo 'NAVAN_API_KEY=your-api-key' >> .env

Step 3: Verify Connection

// Test connection code here

Output

• Installed SDK package in node_modules or site-packages
• Environment variable or .env file with API key
• Successful connection verification output

Error Handling

Examples

TypeScript Setup

import { NavanClient } from '@navan/sdk';

const client = new NavanClient({
  apiKey: process.env.NAVAN_API_KEY,
});

Python Setup

from navan import NavanClient

client = NavanClient(
    api_key=os.environ.get('NAVAN_API_KEY')
)

Resources

• Navan Documentation
• Navan Dashboard
• Navan Status

Next Steps

After successful auth, proceed to navan-hello-world for your first API call.

Navan Multi-Environment Setup

Overview

Configure Navan across development, staging, and production environments.

Prerequisites

• Separate Navan accounts or API keys per environment
• Secret management solution (Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, etc.)
• CI/CD pipeline with environment variables
• Environment detection in application

Environment Strategy

Configuration Structure

config/
├── navan/
│   ├── base.json           # Shared config
│   ├── development.json    # Dev overrides
│   ├── staging.json        # Staging overrides
│   └── production.json     # Prod overrides

base.json

{
  "timeout": 30000,
  "retries": 3,
  "cache": {
    "enabled": true,
    "ttlSeconds": 60
  }
}

development.json

{
  "apiKey": "${NAVAN_API_KEY}",
  "baseUrl": "https://api-sandbox.navan.com",
  "debug": true,
  "cache": {
    "enabled": false
  }
}

staging.json

{
  "apiKey": "${NAVAN_API_KEY_STAGING}",
  "baseUrl": "https://api-staging.navan.com",
  "debug": false
}

production.json

{
  "apiKey": "${NAVAN_API_KEY_PROD}",
  "baseUrl": "https://api.navan.com",
  "debug": false,
  "retries": 5
}

Environment Detection

// src/navan/config.ts
import baseConfig from '../../config/navan/base.json';

type Environment = 'development' | 'staging' | 'production';

function detectEnvironment(): Environment {
  const env = process.env.NODE_ENV || 'development';
  const validEnvs: Environment[] = ['development', 'staging', 'production'];
  return validEnvs.includes(env as Environment)
    ? (env as Environment)
    : 'development';
}

export function getNavanConfig() {
  const env = detectEnvironment();
  const envConfig = require(`../../config/navan/${env}.json`);

  return {
    ...baseConfig,
    ...envConfig,
    environment: env,
  };
}

Secret Management by Environment

Local Development

# .env.local (git-ignored)
NAVAN_API_KEY=sk_test_dev_***

CI

Navan Performance Tuning

Overview

Optimize Navan API performance with caching, batching, and connection pooling.

Prerequisites

• Navan SDK installed
• Understanding of async patterns
• Redis or in-memory cache available (optional)
• Performance monitoring in place

Latency Benchmarks

Caching Strategy

Response Caching

import { LRUCache } from 'lru-cache';

const cache = new LRUCache<string, any>({
  max: 1000,
  ttl: 60000, // 1 minute
  updateAgeOnGet: true,
});

async function cachedNavanRequest<T>(
  key: string,
  fetcher: () => Promise<T>,
  ttl?: number
): Promise<T> {
  const cached = cache.get(key);
  if (cached) return cached as T;

  const result = await fetcher();
  cache.set(key, result, { ttl });
  return result;
}

Redis Caching (Distributed)

import Redis from 'ioredis';

const redis = new Redis(process.env.REDIS_URL);

async function cachedWithRedis<T>(
  key: string,
  fetcher: () => Promise<T>,
  ttlSeconds = 60
): Promise<T> {
  const cached = await redis.get(key);
  if (cached) return JSON.parse(cached);

  const result = await fetcher();
  await redis.setex(key, ttlSeconds, JSON.stringify(result));
  return result;
}

Request Batching

import DataLoader from 'dataloader';

const navanLoader = new DataLoader<string, any>(
  async (ids) => {
    // Batch fetch from Navan
    const results = await navanClient.batchGet(ids);
    return ids.map(id => results.find(r => r.id === id) || null);
  },
  {
    maxBatchSize: 100,
    batchScheduleFn: callback => setTimeout(callback, 10),
  }
);

// Usage - automatically batched
const [item1, item2, item3] = await Promise.all([
  navanLoader.load('id-1'),
  navanLoader.load('id-2'),
  navanLoader.load('id-3'),
]);

Connection Optimization

import { Agent } from 'https';

// Keep-alive connection pooling
const agent = new Agent({
  keepAlive: true,
  maxSockets: 10,
  maxFreeSockets: 5,
  timeout: 30000,
});

const client = new NavanClient({
  apiKey: process.env.NAVAN_API_KEY!,
  httpAgent: agent,
});

Pagination Optimization

async function* paginatedNavanList<T>(
  fetcher: (cursor?: string) => Promise<{ data: T[]; nextCursor?: string }>
): AsyncGenerator<T> {
  let cursor: strin

Navan Production Checklist

Overview

Complete checklist for deploying Navan integrations to production.

Prerequisites

• Staging environment tested and verified
• Production API keys available
• Deployment pipeline configured
• Monitoring and alerting ready

Instructions

Step 1: Pre-Deployment Configuration

• [ ] Production API keys in secure vault
• [ ] Environment variables set in deployment platform
• [ ] API key scopes are minimal (least privilege)
• [ ] Webhook endpoints configured with HTTPS
• [ ] Webhook secrets stored securely

Step 2: Code Quality Verification

• [ ] All tests passing (npm test)
• [ ] No hardcoded credentials
• [ ] Error handling covers all Navan error types
• [ ] Rate limiting/backoff implemented
• [ ] Logging is production-appropriate

Step 3: Infrastructure Setup

• [ ] Health check endpoint includes Navan connectivity
• [ ] Monitoring/alerting configured
• [ ] Circuit breaker pattern implemented
• [ ] Graceful degradation configured

Step 4: Documentation Requirements

• [ ] Incident runbook created
• [ ] Key rotation procedure documented
• [ ] Rollback procedure documented
• [ ] On-call escalation path defined

Step 5: Deploy with Gradual Rollout

# Pre-flight checks
curl -f https://staging.example.com/health
curl -s https://status.navan.com

# Gradual rollout - start with canary (10%)
kubectl apply -f k8s/production.yaml
kubectl set image deployment/navan-integration app=image:new --record
kubectl rollout pause deployment/navan-integration

# Monitor canary traffic for 10 minutes
sleep 600
# Check error rates and latency before continuing

# If healthy, continue rollout to 50%
kubectl rollout resume deployment/navan-integration
kubectl rollout pause deployment/navan-integration
sleep 300

# Complete rollout to 100%
kubectl rollout resume deployment/navan-integration
kubectl rollout status deployment/navan-integration

Output

• Deployed Navan integration
• Health checks passing
• Monitoring active
• Rollback procedure documented

Error Handling

Examples

Health Check Implementation

async function healthCheck(): Promise<{ status: string; navan: any }> {
  const start = Date.now();
  tr

Navan Rate Limits

Overview

Handle Navan rate limits gracefully with exponential backoff and idempotency.

Prerequisites

• Navan SDK installed
• Understanding of async/await patterns
• Access to rate limit headers

Instructions

Step 1: Understand Rate Limit Tiers

Step 2: Implement Exponential Backoff with Jitter

async function withExponentialBackoff<T>(
  operation: () => Promise<T>,
  config = { maxRetries: 5, baseDelayMs: 1000, maxDelayMs: 32000, jitterMs: 500 }
): Promise<T> {
  for (let attempt = 0; attempt <= config.maxRetries; attempt++) {
    try {
      return await operation();
    } catch (error: any) {
      if (attempt === config.maxRetries) throw error;
      const status = error.status || error.response?.status;
      if (status !== 429 && (status < 500 || status >= 600)) throw error;

      // Exponential delay with jitter to prevent thundering herd
      const exponentialDelay = config.baseDelayMs * Math.pow(2, attempt);
      const jitter = Math.random() * config.jitterMs;
      const delay = Math.min(exponentialDelay + jitter, config.maxDelayMs);

      console.log(`Rate limited. Retrying in ${delay.toFixed(0)}ms...`);
      await new Promise(r => setTimeout(r, delay));
    }
  }
  throw new Error('Unreachable');
}

Step 3: Add Idempotency Keys

import { v4 as uuidv4 } from 'uuid';
import crypto from 'crypto';

// Generate deterministic key from operation params (for safe retries)
function generateIdempotencyKey(operation: string, params: Record<string, any>): string {
  const data = JSON.stringify({ operation, params });
  return crypto.createHash('sha256').update(data).digest('hex');
}

async function idempotentRequest<T>(
  client: NavanClient,
  params: Record<string, any>,
  idempotencyKey?: string  // Pass existing key for retries
): Promise<T> {
  // Use provided key (for retries) or generate deterministic key from params
  const key = idempotencyKey || generateIdempotencyKey(params.method || 'POST', params);
  return client.request({
    ...params,
    headers: { 'Idempotency-Key': key, ...params.headers },
  });
}

Output

• Reliable API calls with automatic retry
• Idempotent requests preventing duplicates
• Rate limit headers properly handled

Error Handling

my-navan-project/
├── src/
│   ├── navan/
│   │   ├── client.ts           # Singleton client wrapper
│   │   ├── config.ts           # Environment configuration
│   │   ├── types.ts            # TypeScript types
│   │   ├── errors.ts           # Custom error classes
│   │   └── handlers/
│   │       ├── webhooks.ts     # Webhook handlers
│   │       └── events.ts       # Event processing
│   ├── services/
│   │   └── navan/
│   │       ├── index.ts        # Service facade
│   │       ├── sync.ts         # Data synchronization
│   │       └── cache.ts        # Caching layer
│   ├── api/
│   │   └── navan/
│   │       └── webhook.ts      # Webhook endpoint
│   └── jobs/
│       └── navan/
│           └── sync.ts         # Background sync job
├── tests/
│   ├── unit/
│   │   └── navan/
│   └── integration/
│       └── navan/
├── config/
│   ├── navan.development.json
│   ├── navan.staging.json
│   └── navan.production.json
└── docs/
    └── navan/
        ├── SETUP.md
        └── RUNBOOK.md

┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│             API Layer                    │
│   (Controllers, Routes, Webhooks)        │
├─────────────────────────────────────────┤
│           Service Layer                  │
│  (Business Logic, Orchestration)         │
├─────────────────────────────────────────┤
│          Navan Layer        │
│   (Client, Types, Error Handling)        │
├─────────────────────────────────────────┤
│         Infrastructure Layer             │
│    (Cache, Queue, Monitoring)            │
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘

// src/navan/client.ts
export class NavanService {
  private client: NavanClient;
  private cache: Cache;
  private monitor: Monitor;

  constructor(config: NavanConfig) {
    this.client = new NavanClient(config);
    this.cache = new Cache(config.cacheOptions);
    this.monitor = new Monitor('navan');
  }

  async get(id: string): Promise<Resource> {
    return this.cache.getOrFetch(id, () =>
      this.monitor.track('get', () => this.client.get(id))
    );
  }
}

// src/navan/errors.ts
export class NavanServiceError extends Error {
  constructor(
    message: string,
    public readonly code: string,
    public readonly retryable: boolean,
    public readonly originalError?: Error
  ) {
    super(message);
    this.name = 'NavanServiceError';
  }
}

export function wrapNavanError(error: unknown

// src/navan/client.ts
import { NavanClient } from '@navan/sdk';

let instance: NavanClient | null = null;

export function getNavanClient(): NavanClient {
  if (!instance) {
    instance = new NavanClient({
      apiKey: process.env.NAVAN_API_KEY!,
      // Additional options
    });
  }
  return instance;
}

import { NavanError } from '@navan/sdk';

async function safeNavanCall<T>(
  operation: () => Promise<T>
): Promise<{ data: T | null; error: Error | null }> {
  try {
    const data = await operation();
    return { data, error: null };
  } catch (err) {
    if (err instanceof NavanError) {
      console.error({
        code: err.code,
        message: err.message,
      });
    }
    return { data: null, error: err as Error };
  }
}

async function withRetry<T>(
  operation: () => Promise<T>,
  maxRetries = 3,
  backoffMs = 1000
): Promise<T> {
  for (let attempt = 1; attempt <= maxRetries; attempt++) {
    try {
      return await operation();
    } catch (err) {
      if (attempt === maxRetries) throw err;
      const delay = backoffMs * Math.pow(2, attempt - 1);
      await new Promise(r => setTimeout(r, delay));
    }
  }
  throw new Error('Unreachable');
}

const clients = new Map<string, NavanClient>();

export function getClientForTenant(tenantId: string): NavanClient {
  if (!clients.has(tenantId)) {
    const apiKey = getTenantApiKey(tenantId);
    clients.set(tenantId, new NavanClient({ apiKey }));
  }
  return clients.get(tenantId)!;
}